Star Trek | Critical Essay by Betsy Caprio

Star Trek appeals to us so much because Captain Kirk's story and Mr. Spock's story and the Enterprise's story is our story too….

The tales and people in the original seventy-nine Star Trek episodes "tell our story" because they address themselves to the common questions and hungers and experiences of life that all people of all times and places (including each of us) have ever lived through. (p. 20)

[Star Trek is] filled with eternal overtones, a series that links its viewers to people of both the future and the past, people who—like us—are concerned with eternal questions. (p. 21)

Star Trek gives us, better than any other modern-day visual expression, an awareness that a journey in search of something is what makes life worth living. (p. 38)

Star Trek, with its beautiful moving image of a purposeful journey (the Enterprise) and...